Jóna
by Swing Girl At Heart
Summary: -The Secret of Roan Inish- Fiona knows that the Dark Ones in her family came from the Selkie, but where did her fair skin and yellow hair come from? Not all the Irish are light.


"Please tell me, I want to hear," Fiona begged her grandfather.

"It's already past your bedtime, darlin," her grandmother said sternly, poking at the hearth. "Jamie's already fast asleep, poor dear. 'Twas all the mussel-pullin' you and Eamon had him do t'day, Hugh."

Fiona's grandfather flapped a hand. "Hard work's part o' Roan Inish. He'll grow used to it, don't you worry." He chewed on the stem of his pipe, turning his warm eyes back to the young girl sitting on the rug at his feet, her legs delicately curled beneath her nightgown. "Alright," he sighed, puffing a cloud of smoke. "I'll tell you the story quick, and then you've got to go to bed."

Fiona brightened in the light of the hearth and leaned in excitedly as Hugh shifted to a more comfortable position in his chair.

"Now, Cillian Coneelly was one of the first Coneellys to live on Roan Inish. And mind you, this was far, far back. Before even Liam married Nualah. Before his grandfather's grandfather's grandfather. Cillian, with his plain brown hair and brown eyes like all t'other Irish boys he knew, was a strong lad, hardworkin', proud. But he was cruel. Because for all his good upbringin' and gentle mother and disciplined father, he felt the sea inside him more than any man had before, and it drove him angry. None of the boys on the island liked him, and none of the girls dared to tease him. One day during summer, after workin' the fields, his mother told him he had to go to town to fetch her some bread; after all, 'twas the time o' year when the flour was runnin' low. So go to town he did. And do you know what he found there?"

Fiona shook her head and leaned forward, her eyes wide.

"He was returning to the docks, bread in his hand, when he spied a girl steppin' out of a butcher shop. And her hair was so bright, shinin' like gold in the sun, he thought she was an angel sent from heav'n, and he dropped the bread right there in the gutter. O' course, he took no notice of that, and went to speak to her, but his tongue was tied by the sight of her face when she turned around. Eyes like the sea, she had, and skin as pale as the froth on the waves. As it turned out, she didn't know a word of Irish, so it didn't matter that Cillian couldn't speak. When she spoke, it was in a foreign tongue, but he was so enraptured by the beauty of the sound that he didn't care that he couldn't understand a word she was sayin'." At this, Hugh chuckled almost as if it were a memory he were telling.

"What language was it?" Fiona asked eagerly,

"'Twas Icelandic – the tongue of the Viking warriors of old," Hugh answered, gesturing in the air with his pipe. Tess smiled from where she sat mending the hem of one of Jamie's shirts. "After many failed attempts at conversation, Cillian saw her family on the docks – they were all just as fair-haired and light-skinned, but none so beautiful as she. As it turned out, they had only arrived that mornin', because a mountain in Iceland had opened up and spit fire from the belly of the earth, leavin' their home nothin' but a charred wasteland of ash, and they had nowhere else to go. Cillian put them all into his boat and brought them to Roan Inish, where he gave them food and a warm fire. The people of the island were suspicious of them, though. Just as they would come to be of Nualah, when she arrived. With the lightness of their skin and hair, you could spot one of them from a mile away, and they mostly kept to themselves. All but for Cillian, who began to spend all his time with the girl, whose name he'd learned was Jóna. The other villagers did not see her as Cillian did; they saw her broad shoulders and wide hips, they saw her strong arms and stubborn chin – after all, she was a warrior child – and they thought her to be ugly. But Cillian felt a love for Jóna as strong as the passion of the sea, and the islanders saw a change in him unlike any they'd seen before. After Jóna arrived, he'd become gentle and kind. He taught her all the ways of Roan Inish. And stranger still, while the other girls would stay ashore and cook and clean and care for the young with their mothers, Jóna rejoiced in a man's work. She would go out onto the waves every day and fish with him, build boats with him, pull mussels with him, and it wasn't long before she could speak Irish just as well as if she were born so."

"Did they get married?" Fiona interrupted.

Hugh nodded with a smile. "Aye, that they did. They were married, and their children born with the same yellow hair and white skin as had been passed down through their mother's family since the time o' the Vikings. Eventually, Jóna's father and mother died, and her siblings moved back to their motherland as they'd heard that their home was back on its feet after the fire. But Jóna had fallen into a deep love with the sea and with Roan Inish, and she stayed until her dyin' day."

"How did she die?" Fiona asked.

Hugh thought for a moment as he recalled this particular detail. "'Twas when their eldest was about Eamon's age that Cillian and Jóna went out to fish like they so often did, that a storm blew up so rapidly that husband and wife had no time to row back to the safety of the island, and they were never seen again," Hugh leaned back on the final note, adding as an afterthought, "I s'pose it was lucky for them that they went together. But ever since then, every Coneelly has been born with the golden hair and the white skin and the blue eyes of a Viking."

"It's a wonderful story," Fiona said, a wistful smile gracing her features.

"Aye, it is."

Tess spoke up from her seat. "And don't you forget where your head o' gold hair came from, either, lass. Some Coneelly's think that Nualah's the only important ancestor they've got."

"I'll remember, I promise."

"Good girl. Now go to bed, or you'll be exhausted in the mornin'."


End file.
